YALSA announces Gene Luen Yang as 2017 Teen Tech Week™ National Spokesperson
Tuesday, February 21, 2017
Gene Luen Yang is the National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature and has written and drawn many graphic novels, including American Born Chinese, which was a National Book Award finalist, as well as the winner of YALSA’s 2007 Printz Award and an Eisner Award. His graphic novel set Boxers and Saints won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and was listed on YALSA’s 2014 Great Graphic Novels for Teens and Popular Paperbacks for Young Adults lists. His latest graphic novels, the Secret Coders series, combine comics and computer programming.
“Libraries have always been about both information and wisdom. Library staff teach us to be wise and discerning about the information we consume,” said Yang. “Because of technology, our world is now more information-rich than ever before, which is why we are more in need of wisdom than ever before.”
Teen Tech Week 2017 will take place March 5-11 with the theme “Be the Source of Code” and will feature a “Twitter Takeover” during the week where Yang and others will each “takeover” YALSA’s twitter account for a day and share resources and information relative to the importance of helping teens build computational thinking skills. A full list of participants and dates will be announced at the end of February.
Teen Tech Week is celebrated each March in order to shine a light on all the ways that libraries help connect teens to technologies and tech experts who can help them build skills for 21st century careers. Learn more about Teen Tech Week at www.ala.org/teentechweek and join the site for access to free resources such as themed posters, bookmarks, and more.
The mission of the Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA) is to support library staff in alleviating the challenges teens face, and in putting all teens ‒ especially those with the greatest needs ‒ on the path to successful and fulfilling lives. For more information about YALSA or to access national guidelines and other resources go to www.ala.org/yalsa, or contact the YALSA office by phone, 800-545-2433, ext. 4390; or e-mail: yalsa@ala.org.
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